July

Papillion II

She sat with her legs spread wide and with one hand holding the door to the mini-van closed as he drove down the highway. There was a layer of red dust coating the carpet beneath her feet and when she slide the soles of her sandals over it, it clouded up and settled on her painted toe nails. I sat on the lap of a complete stranger in the adjacent seat. He was Native American, I suppose, because everyone in her family was. Her father was Cherokee and sold drugs. The three men in the back of the van spoke to one another in Spanish or said things that I didn’t understand at the time but as it was so long ago I cannot remember.  I looked over at her again. I was so nervous she might let the door go and fall out onto the hot pavement- a 65 mile per hour mess for ambulance crews to clean and for us to answer to.

She was sweating and pregnant.  A striped t-shirt pulled tight over her stomach held the baby in its place and her black hair hung stringy and long over her breasts. There must have not been a muffler on the old van because as I remember her now I hear only loud buzzing and whatever language was coming from the backseat. Her face was pale, scarred, and blemished and she used her ring finger to pick the dry skin away from her jaw line.

“Where am I taking you girls?”

“Bud’s Lanes.”

The man beneath me shifted his weight and rested his hand on my hip. That door could slide open and she would die. I played it over and over in my head. What could I do? I wouldn’t be able to save her. I would just have to watch and her father might not even stop the van he might just keep driving and flee the scene of what might be considered reckless homicide her head would hit the pavement with a sudden bloody “crack!” and her arms and legs would scrape and burn and all that would be left of her was her stomach reigning high over what used to be a full-fleshed body but now was flat and dead on the side of the road.

There was an exit on the other side of the bypass. Her father took it and her mother started to speak.

“You know, baby, it’s not always going to be like this. Someday we are gonna get a big boat, take it out on the river, and stay on it for days. Shit, it’ll be so big that we can sell the house and live on it. You and your brother and sister can each have your own room and-“

The van stopped and she slid the door open. I crouched down and followed her out into the sunlight.

______

He was a combination of two particularly ugly boyfriends I once had- he wore his hair slicked back and had a uni-brow forming.

“I need 20 bucks.”

He walked with us into the dark and damp bowling alley.

“I don’t have any money. Can’t you see I’m trying to get to work?”

He stepped in front of her and smiled at her stomach then looked up at her with melodramatic, longing eyes.

“Fuck, Ryan. I don’t have any money.”

“Bitch.”

I heard him mumble something else as he heaved his bowling bag up and pouted over to the lockers.

He might have been Mexican, but not really because he was just as pale as she was and probably hated Mexicans.

She walked behind the bar and I headed to the change machine.

“Jessie, turn it up! We’re playin’ your cd.”

I watched her blush and it was beautiful. She turned up the song on the loud speakers in the bar.

Her voice sounded OK.

Three years prior, her grandmother had cashed in bonds to send her to Nashville to become famous. She paid money to record some songs in a studio down the street from the Grand Old Opry but could not afford nor had the face to become a real country star. While she was there she fell in love with what she believed to be a cowboy, but was nothing more than a bartender in a cowboy hat. He knew two or three Garth Brooks songs on guitar and had a jukebox plugged in, in the bedroom of his extended stay hotel room. When they would fuck he’d put on “Neon Moon” by Brooks and Dunn. When the song would end he’d reach over and punch the dials to get it to repeat. He was not her first man. Feelings were seemingly mutual until she walked in on him with her younger sister who had come to visit for the summer- she knew that this was something she should never tell Ryan about.

 I found a nickel and a dime on the floor in front of the change machine and used a payphone outside to call home.

“Mom, can someone come get me?”

“I’m at the bowling alley”

“Okay, I’ll wait outside.”

I sat on the curb outside the front door and leaned back onto my hands.  The tiny bits of rock and sand stuck to my sweating palms and when I brushed them off on my jeans they left tiny red imprints behind.